1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed generally to systems and methods of detecting contamination in feed material (e.g., soil) and separating contaminated portions of the feed material from uncontaminated portions.
2. Description of the Related Art
Nuclear waste generators ship radioactive soil to expensive and highly regulated landfills for long-term storage and/or final disposal. Unfortunately, the cost of this type of disposal has increased over the years. Further, many landfills have closed, creating an ever-increasing demand for this type of storage.
Soils by contaminated by radionuclides are often heterogeneous having both clean and contaminated portions. Further, excavating a contaminated site typically mixes significant volumes of clean soil with contaminated soil. Therefore, a need exists for systems and methods that segregate or separate clean soil from contaminated soil thereby reducing the volume of waste in need of disposal and/or long-term storage. Because other types of materials, such as concrete rubble, masonry rubble, ores, ashes, metallic pieces, metallic scraps, vegetable matter, and other types of debris could also be partially contaminated, systems and methods configured to evaluate such materials would be particularly desirable. The present application provides these and other advantages as will be apparent from the following detailed description and accompanying figures.